The public life and death of a familiar Rockford man who few knew

ROCKFORD — Randy Wells walked everywhere with purpose, his bald head down like a bowling ball zeroing in on a head pin somewhere down the sidewalk.

The Monday before Thanksgiving, he walked to the Jefferson Street Bridge.

He jumped.

It was just before 8 a.m., a time most weekdays that Wells would be moving in short, rapid steps, his arms pumping, south from his apartment building, Olesen Plaza, toward the Epilepsy Foundation office downtown in the Talcott Building, 321 W. State St.

There he’d meet Ben Slack. They’d open the office together. Then, the former Marine and the 43-year-old developmentally disabled little man — hard of hearing with mild mental retardation and “situational mental illness” — would have a cup of coffee to start the day.

On Nov. 25 the routine ended when the ubiquitous Wells, who loved arm wrestling, music, collecting newspapers and solving Sudoku puzzles, died in the cold Rock River.

What happened?

“We’ll never really know,” said Slack, communications director for the Epilepsy Foundation.

Cities are full of people marginalized by circumstance. Many live and die in amorphous shadows of poverty or madness, aspects of urban life often hidden behind affluent blinders.

Wells transcended his circumstances and emerged from the shadows, becoming a familiar figure as he walked everywhere with an aggressive bulldog gait that belied, acquaintances say, a puppy dog heart.

Most suicides aren’t bridge jumpings and most don’t become public. Between 1999 and 2010 Winnebago County averaged 29 suicides a year, according to Census figures. In the past five years, Winnebago County Coroner Sue Fiduccia said, the county has averaged about 40 suicides a year.

Wells’s suicide, which Fiduccia says was one of two by drowning in the past five years, did become public because of where it occurred and the police and fire resources that went into the attempted water rescue.

When Slack announced Wells’s death by posting a picture on Facebook of him eating a plate of chips and sausage, it went viral locally, and 162 people shared the photo with their Facebook friends.

Dozens more — including politicians, musicians, barkeepers and people who had met Wells along the way — left comments about a man who ranged far and wide along city sidewalks that, it turns out, may have been lonely avenues.

“Randy was just one of those people that everyone remembered,” Slack said. “They knew of him or about him. But I don’t think anyone ever really knew him.”

Slack knew him as an intelligent man who liked magazines and Yahtzee and confided to him that he had been abused as a child. Wells grew up in the foster care system and was adopted, but for years he lived on his own. No family member came forward to claim his body, Slack said.

“He was always very friendly and very positive when I saw him,” said Rockford Ald. Tom McNamara, D-3, who was working at Goodwill Industries when he first met Wells. “He was always walking with meaning. He always had a purpose.”

Wells moved into Olesen Plaza, a high-rise managed by the Rockford Housing Authority, 511 N. Court St., 16 years ago. He was an Epilepsy Foundation client in an independent living program for people with developmental disabilities. He loved music and crowds. He saw Brad Paisley at the BMO Harris Center last month and attended the WWE Smackdown wrestling show there in August. Slack said Wells liked going to City Market because he loved being around people.

His apartment was a poster and bobblehead shrine to the band Kiss, with a spot reserved on the wall for Britney Spears, one Olesen Plaza resident said Tuesday at a memorial service.

Olesen resident Laura Wright recalled cleaning her closet one day and taking sandals she no longer wore downstairs for donation.

“I took them down to the laundry room and pretty soon, here comes Randy,” Wright said. “He had the sandals on.”

Wells frequented the community room at Olesen where the memorial service was held, leaving trails of spilled coffee as he moved from table to table.

And then he’d head outside, where the trail might lead to shopping areas miles away on East State Street or Forest Hills Road.

Jenkins said she’s not been able to make sense of Wells’s suicide.

“Losing Randy to me is just like losing one of my children,” she said. “Randy was the type of person that to know him was to love him.”

She urged fellow residents to knock on her door, day or night, to talk to her if they’re feeling lonesome, confused or suicidal.

Jenkins said she knew Wells hadn’t been feeling well in his last days.

Earnestine Brady was his caseworker the past six years. She saw him nearly every day.

She knew him as an energetic, high-spirited guy “with a big heart.” Brady said her daughter knew Wells before she did. Her daughter worked at the Eagle Store on North Main Street, and Wells would stop in seeking to arm wrestle anyone who would take him on.

“He never arm-wrestled me,” said Brady, who took Wells to medical appointments, helped him do laundry and shop for groceries during the week, and on weekends sometimes took him to family cookouts or football games.

“He was family to me,” she said.

Brady said that Wells didn’t reveal any issues that hinted of mental pain.

“We weren’t aware of any and we were with him most of the time,” she said. He had been counseled for anger management, but nothing recently, she said.

Physically, however, Wells was suffering.

Five years ago he had abdominal surgery and symptoms had returned. The night before he jumped from the bridge, Wells got sick at a church dinner and was taken by ambulance to the emergency room.

“I went and sat with him until 10:30,” Brady said. “Then I took him home. He said good night to me and that he’d see me tomorrow.”

A memorial service hosted by the Epilepsy Foundation is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday in Zion Lutheran Church’s youth center.